Luv Ranjan: ‘Ramayan’ wouldn’t have been cleared by the censors

Censor is cinema’s cancer, says the debutant director who is hopping mad over the biased approach of the board

It has been two weeks since his film Pyaar ka Punchnama (PKP)has released and has been wildly appreciated, especially by the boys. Despite this, Luv Ranjan is an angry man and that is thanks to the censor board for the nightmares they gave him when his film was up for release. In his defence, Ranjan says that he had sent his film to the censors after appropriately bleeping out the cuss words and other miscellany that he thought might get him into trouble. The story goes that a certain gentleman in the Board had a personal axe to grind due to which Ranjan was made to go through a lot of hassles in getting his film released; albeit with some cuts which left him disgruntled. The Board was of the opinion that PKP endorses live-in relationships and many such things, which Ranjan thought wasn’t an unreasonable argument. The debutant director told us that going by the censor standards, serials like Ramayan and Mahabharat wouldn’t have been approved by the them. How would the parents explain to children why Lord Rama sent Sita away after returning from Lanka, Draupadi’s vastraharan,etc. He also pointed towards the bias of the Board by quoting examples of recently released film Luv ka the End which not only had cuss words aplenty but also many blasphemous moments especially when one of the characters use the phrase ‘slutty Savitri’ in a verbal duel. Hope the success of PKP simmers this angry young director down.